Archive for the 'Machining' Category

…well, problems come in pairs. I changed my front brake pads about about 8600 miles; they wore away quickly! I didn’t change the rear, as they weren’t as bad as the front. I checked the new front ones at 15,000 miles and they are doing great. I had looked at the rear but only on one side and without taking the wheel off. They looked okay, so I wasn’t going to do them yet. However, the rear brakes started making a horrible noise last Friday.

So today I decided to take the brakes apart and drop in the new pads I already had on hand. It turned out to be an all day adventure. The left pads were worn, and it was time to replace them, but they weren’t totally shot. The right rear wasn’t in such good shape. Of the two pads, the left pad wore twice as fast, and was starting to etch into the disc! Doh! It wasn’t that bad, and I’m not going to replace the disc, but I had some trouble with installing the new pads. First of all, the pistons on the calipers were not wanting to go back in. I had to force them in with a pretty large C-clamp, and even then it was a lot of effort to get them in. Then I encountered the “problem”.

I have the rear disc brake conversion kit from CIP1. It is this one. It turns out one of the bolts that moves in and out to let the brake adjust was seized. So instead of moving as the pads wore, it just stayed put, and caused one side of the pad to wear twice as fast as the other! Worse, it was impossible to get off. I tried lots of things, including heating it with the torch, but it wasn’t budging. I put a bolt in and tried to get it to move…but that was a bad idea as the bolt snapped right off! That made things worse. I took the piece off the car and worked it in my vice and finally got it out.

In the picture below, the bottom right hole is where it was stuck; I managed to get it out by working it in a vice for a while.

The stuck piece freed:

Apparently some water got in the hole and let things rust up nice and bad. The sucky part is that I broke the bolt off in the piece:

..and easy outs (bolt extractors) *never* work for me. So, I of course broke one off in it.

I wasn’t sure what to do. I could order a new caliper (i.e.: this one). for $120 plus shipping, and wait a week to get it…but I don’t want to do that as it means week of not driving and I also have a car show to go to next Saturday! Instead, I decided to machine my own piece. So, after some time on the lathe and mill I had a replacement.

In the picture below, the top is the broken piece, the middle is the good piece+bolt, and the bottom is what I made. After the picture was taken, I quenched it in oil to harden it (note to self: don’t do it in a plastic container).

The finished piece is on the right, and the material I used is the big lump of steel.

My short test drive seems to let the brakes work! Cool…it only took all day (~10am to 8pm). And I missed hanging out with my friend Nathan for his birthday! Doh…

I’m doing a series of videos on how I made my second Roue Cyr (Cyr Wheel — aka: Simple Wheel).

Here’s the last in the series…which is skinning.

How to skin a roue cyr wheel

Email me if you have questions.

Using the plasma cutter to make stuff…

I wanted a new pull-up bar for my house. The old one looked tacky…but how can anything be tacky around your own house if you put it there? Here’s some shapes cut out of metal:

Pieces setup for welding:

Ugly pullup bar removed:

Hanging on the wheel (as seen through the eyes of a lyra. And in this picture you can see how the top right of the lyra wasn’t quite as circular as I wanted…)

I needed somewhere better t hang my cube when I wasn’t using it. So, I made a cube hanger!

I used the plasma cutter to cut some pieces of 3/16′ish steel plate (from the scrap yard):

Cut out:

I TIG welded on some 1.5″ pipe at a 45 angle:

Cleaned it up, and powder coated it flat black:

Bolted it to my beam (it is super strong!):

And hang the cube! It is a little close to the wall, but out of the way. It is kind of fun to sit in it, so I’ll probably whip up another one more in the center of the room to hang for parties and stuff.

What a better use for an old VW brake drum?

A few in progress shots:

Initial sketch and idea:

I got a new tool a few weeks ago. A plasma cutter!

After doing some research, I went with a Thermal Dynamics Cutmaster 52. It is awesome!

I also had to get a new air compressor to keep up with it. I went with a Husky one from Home Depot; it has a three year warranty, whereas most other ones of the same size have a 1 year warranty. Plus, there were lots of good reviews on HomeDepot.com.

How about a tour of my garage shop?

Grinder:

Work desk and tools hanging on the wall:

The fan in the window is used to exhaust fumes from welding and other things:

Nuts, bolts and Bengal cat:

JET drill press:

Metal stock:

MATCO welder (I bought it used) and oxy-acetylne setup behind it to the left:

Grizzly G0555 wood bandsaw. Works well for the small shop, although a few times I have wanted a wider throat.

Grizzly 8″ jointer; I bought a good large jointer, but I have only used it a few times so far:

The dust collection system lives behind the garage in a little shed I built just for it. Here is a post when I setup dust collection in the shop. The buttons on the wall turn it on and off:

1990 Enco Milling machine. Awesome! I bought it used, but it has been working great since I did some tune ups on the belt.

Milling tooling and accessories:

Powder coating oven given to me by Eric (thanks!). On top of it is my powder coating supplies. The 50 amp outlet for it on it is also used to charge my car. To the top right of it in the gray box is an American Rotary phase converter than generates 3 phase for the mill.

Southbend lathe from the 1950′s

Misc storage and stuff:

The latest addition; Grizzly 36″ slip roll:

Router table to the right of the table saw. Underneath is a jig saw and router:

Grizzly horizontal metal bandsaw with swivel head. One of the most used tools for metalworking, and definitely a must have for doing any kind of metal work. The swivel head is also GREAT.

Grizzly G0444 contractor table saw. A little underpowered, and eventually I will get a full size cabinet saw with a riving knife (for extra safety):

Overall, I have bought a lot of Grizzly tools. They are fairly priced, and I find the quality to be quite good for shop use. I have had no real problems with the Grizzly tools. They are definitely better than the Enco brand tools (although, the mill I have is of decent quality), and light years ahead of Harbor Freight tools (which I won’t buy, unless it is for a one time project).

Tuner’s Cube. I made it for my dad for Christmas 2010. Aaron helped me over Thanksgiving break to figure out the details and did some machining on it too. It started out as a ~3.5″x3.5″ solid square piece of aluminum.

We made a jig to hold it so it could be removed and place back in again at the same position but on a different edge.

The rotary table on the mill was used to turn it out:

Second half of the jig — this was Aaron’s idea, and it worked great. Just use a piece of mild steel with a hold cut into it and clamp it down on top.

Lots of chips:

Here’s a wine glass rack I made for my dad’s wife, Karen. I made it a while ago, but it was a Christmas present, so I couldn’t post it till after the 25th.

It is made out of 1/4″ diameter mild steel round stock.

I bent each top piece by hand, freestyle around a little jig. I welded each one to the other one at the base. To cover up the welds, I wanted to curl some of the round stock around it; I tried to pre-bend it by hand, but that wasn’t working. Instead, I started by tacking the top portion on (as seen below at the top of the wrap). I then took the oxy/acet torch and heated the stuff up until it glowed red and then just wrapped it around again and again, sometimes using a hammer to get it to go a little tighter. That worked great, but it makes me want to make a forge to more easily make stuff like this.

The bottom spiral I also bent by hand, using the same jig which I had around for my railing.

It is covered with some spray-can semi-gloss clear coat.

An electric motor doesn’t need a big flywheel to keep the engine running. It also doesn’t need the starter gear teeth around the edge. In fact, all it really has to do is engage with the clutch disc via the pressure plate. I’m not sure how beefy that needs to be, but I decided to take down a bit of the flywheel size on my old south bend lathe.

Here’s the tranny, coupling adapter, and flywheel:

I bolted the coupling adapter to the flywheel; it didn’t come with the right bolts, and I had bought some grade 5 bolts that didn’t quite fit on it either, so I turned down the coupling a little bit to let them attach. Later I replaced it with an hex head bolt.

I put the coupling/flywheel in the four jaw chuck and centered it on the lathe:

The teeth were probably hardened, as they weren’t cutting too well, so instead I just did a bunch of plunge cuts on the fact and cut the teeth off:

It had taken a while to do that, but after it was done it was just a matter of setting the machine up and letting it cut over and over again:

I only took off material from the side; I could probably have made the back thinner too, but I wasn’t sure how much and if it would be worth the time. Here you can see a bit of the material that I cut off:

Then a sample test fit on the motor with the adapter plate. The adapter plate was all rusty looking; the machinist that made it did a terrible job on the steel, and had literally painted over some rust. I cleaned it all off as best I could and powder coated it red to match the motor:

I then dropped the flywheel off at a machine/transmission shop (Clarks Machine Shop in Cupertino) to balance it, since I have no idea how to do it and I wanted it to be done right with no vibration. They have had it for almost two weeks; they need some kind of axle or something to mount it to their machine and were supposed to borrow one a week ago. Hopefully I’ll get it back next week, and then I can actually put the motor in!